I said hi, and bent
down to offer my hand for smelling. He slowed and
neared. But then the motherf*cker started barking at
me. Bastard hound got barking and he wouldn't stop. I
started telling him to f*ck off.

The owner, a woman
about two hundred yards back toward the city center,
started calling him "come hee-yeer," all chirpy
sweetlike the way women can never get male dogs to
obey. Jesus.

I got to
stamping my feet and telling him to f*ck off and go
away. People downstream for a hundred yards started to
move on. God damn.

I tried to chase the f*cker away,
tried stamping my feet some more, and started to look
schemingly at a halfempty plastic coke bottle over
against the castle wall. Woman kept calling the dog. "Come heeyer." Shit. I was finally physically going
for the pop-bottle and I was going to swing that
f*cker at the dog  I was going to paste him
broadside  when he finally barked his way back toward
the woman.